In early February of 2007, Gilbert was planning on coming home for the weekend. He decided to take an anatomy test a day early, and after he got an A he jumped in his 1984 Mazda pickup truck and headed home. His arrival was a happy surprise.

His mother was a single mom and he often saw himself as a surrogate father to his younger sister even though she was only three years younger.

Yolanda Garcia was only two weeks from turning 15 and Gilbert was heavily involved in helping to plan her Quinceañera.

As was his custom, he went to his sister’s parent-teacher conference with his mother that evening. Yolanda got to choose what they had for dinner that night, and so they had Chinese.

During the dinner, Gilbert made an off-handed remark.

“ ‘This will be the last time we eat dinner together,’ ” Rodarte said.

She told him no, that he would go back to school but Denver was always his home.

“‘I’m going home, home, mom,’” Rodarte said he told her. “I think he always knew what was going to happen.”

A few hours later, he asked his grandfather if he wanted him to move him into his bed and he said no, he could wait.

Gilbert had something he wanted to do that night. He and two friends climbed into his pickup and headed to a friend’s house. They were going to burn some CDs for Yolanda’s Quinceañera.

It was about 8:45 p.m. A car immediately followed him when he pulled away from his house.

Shortly afterward that car pulled back, and a dark-colored car pulled up along-side Gilbert’s pickup truck at East Bruce Randolph Avenue and Williams Street at a stop sign.

What’s really sad is how the police handled this case. They turned it into a gang case and basically dismissed it. Denver Police are the worst.

Melissa R

Mr. Kirk Mitchell,
Thank you for remembering my Son Gilbert. It is good to know someone is thinking about him and spreading the word that we are still looking for his Killer or Killers. The lose of my only Son has devastated our family. Still 7 years later our lives are not in the least bit the same. Once again thank you.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.